Let Us Help You Reach Your New Year’s Goals

01.08.20 | Susan Duncan

Happy New Year! While most reports from Q4 indicate that 2019 was a robust year for law firms, others are cautioning that we are still due for a slowdown in 2020.  Now is the time to hone your growth strategies, safely secure your clients and your own talent, and proactively manage into the future.  We…

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Smart Growth Part 7: Organic Growth of Revenue

12.03.19 | Susan Duncan

In our prior post, Smart Growth Part 6: Organic Growth of Talent, we discussed the need for growing your talent organically as well as through lateral hiring of associates and partners.  Today, when leaders and consultants talk about organic growth, they often are referring to the revenue side of organic growth.  In a highly competitive environment…

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Innovation Case Study 3: Perkins Coie

08.07.19 | Susan Duncan

In our two prior posts,  Innovation Case Study 1 and Innovation Case Study 2, we described two different law firm approaches to innovation.  This third case study describes the efforts at Perkins Coie with a focus on those being led or shepherded by Toby Brown, the firm’s Chief Practice Management Officer.  Toby has been in the…

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Innovation Case Study 2: Davis Wright and Tremaine – Fostering Service Delivery

07.26.19 | Susan Duncan

At the recent P3 Conference (P3 stands for Pricing, Project Management and Process Improvement,) Sam Davenport, Business Innovation and Finance Director, DWT/De Novo, DWT and Brian Fanning, Director of Practice Economics at Davis Wright & Tremaine, shared their approaches to how they support and expand a culture of innovation at the 550-lawyer firm that has…

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Innovation Case Study 1: Levenfeld Pearlstein

07.10.19 | Susan Duncan

Levenfeld Pearlstein is a 75-lawyer firm in Chicago. Its innovative CEO, Angie Hickey, recently shared her insights at the P3 Conference about how the firm has adopted a corporate style Customer Experience culture that sets it apart.  Their client focus permeates everything the firm does both internally and externally. The firm was founded in 1999…

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Innovation Part 2: Insights from Experts

04.03.19 | Susan Duncan

The 2019 Legalweek conference hosted presentations by many experts who represented various players in the legal ecosystem: law firms, in-house lawyers, technology companies, ALSPs and consultants.  In our prior post, Innovation Part 1: What It Is and What It Isn’t, we provided the framework for how to think about innovation in law. In this post,…

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Innovation Part 1: What it Is and What it Isn’t

03.20.19 | Susan Duncan

With so much buzz about the need for innovation in the legal profession, it can be overwhelming and also very misleading. Many misconstrue that innovation in law firms is all about technology.  It isn’t.  Some of the most fundamental innovation that is occurring has to do with how work is done, why, by whom and…

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Practice Groups Part 2: Practice Group Leader as Strategist

11.28.18 | Susan Duncan

It is surprising how many law firms, their leaders and partners eschew the discipline of planning and strategy. Many firms still don’t require annual plans or even the process of planning from their partners, or practice groups and many don’t even have a strategic plan for the firm. A survey conducted by Patrick McKenna and David…

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Change Management 2: Strong Leadership and Collaboration are Required to Drive Change

10.24.18 | Susan Duncan

Making meaningful and sustainable change will require collaboration and strong leadership. As discussed in Change Management Part 1, effectuating change in law firms is more difficult than other professions and industries and managing partners cite the reluctance or refusal of the vast majority of their partners to change.  Given the dynamic shifts occurring in the…

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Succession Management Pillar 5 of 5: Senior Lawyer Transitions and Next Career Support

09.26.18 | Susan Duncan

In this final post in our five-part series on succession planning, we address perhaps the most challenging aspect of the topic: managing and supporting individual senior partner transitions.  In Pillar 1, Pillar 2, Pillar 3 and Pillar 4 we discussed various components of how firms can design and manage approaches to the many facets of succession…

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Succession Management Pillar 3 of 5: Client Succession and Transition Management

08.22.18 | Susan Duncan

This post follows two prior posts and addresses the third pillar of succession management. Like many aspects of law firm management, the subject of succession planning often is limited to internal firm or management discussions and consideration.  This is a mistake. Clients know and worry that senior partners may be nearing retirement, and absent any…

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Succession Management Pillar 2 of 5: Revenue, Finance and Compensation

08.08.18 | Susan Duncan

Much of the Baby Boomer/retirement/succession dilemma revolves around money: the firm’s revenues, senior partner’s contribution to and control of client revenue, partner compensation and incentives to transition and other financial aspects of retiring partners.As noted in our recent post: Succession Management: The Problem and a RoadMap, we know that according to Altman Weil, 73% of…

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Customer Experience (CX) Part 3 – Transform Your Firm with Superior Client Experience

05.10.17 | Susan Duncan

[Note: This post is co-authored by RainMaking Oasis and Jonathan Hollenberg of HawkPartners, a marketing strategy and research firm for Fortune 500 companies.] In our prior two posts Customer Experience (CX) Part 1 – Is It Different than Customer Service  and Customer Experience (CX) Part 2 – Mapping the Client Journey, we discussed the difference…

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Customer Experience (CX) Part 2 – Mapping the Client Journey

04.26.17 | Susan Duncan

[Note: This post is co-authored by RainMaking Oasis and Jonathan Hollenberg of HawkPartners, a marketing strategy and research firm for Fortune 500 companies.] As discussed in our first post Customer Experience (CX) Part 1 – Is It Different than Customer Service, customer satisfaction often focuses on narrow and discrete touch points that clients are exposed…

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Customer Experience (CX) Part 1 – Is It Different from Customer Service?

04.12.17 | Susan Duncan

Providing exceptional and consistent client service is critical to your firm’s success, but to be a real winner, you will have to deliver an exceptional client experience (CX).  With clients now in the driver’s seat and law firms aggressively competing to hold on to clients or take work away from others, we know that excellent…

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